Newer ideals of peace

by Jane Addams

The situation was a typical one, exemplifying the real aim of popular government with its concern for primitive needs, forced to seek expression outside of the organized channels of government. If the militia could have been called in, government would have been placed even more dramatically in the position of the oppressor of popular self-government. The phenomenal good order, the comparative lack of violence on the part of the striking workmen, gave no chance for the bringing in of the militia. The city politician was of course very much disappointed, for it would have afforded him an opening to put the odium of this traditional opposition of government, an opposition which has always been most dramatically embodied in the soldier, upon the political party dominating the State but not the city. It would have given the city politician an excellent opportunity to show the concern of himself and his party for the real people, as over against the attitude of the party dominating the State. But because the militia was not called, his scheme failed, and the legitimate strike leaders who, although they passed through much tribulation because of this political interference, did not eventually lose control.

The situation in the Chicago stock-yards also afforded an excellent epitome of the fact that government so often finds itself, not only in opposition to the expressed will of the people making the demand at the moment, but apparently against the best instincts of the mass of the citizens as a whole.

For years the city administration had so protected the property interests invested in the stock-yards, that none of the sanitary ordinances had ever been properly enforced. The sickening stench and the scum on the branch of the river known as Bubbly Creek at times made that section of the city unendurable. The smoke ordinances were openly ignored, nor did the meat inspector ever seriously interfere with business, being quite willing to have meat sold in Chicago which had not passed the inspection for foreign markets. The water steals, too, for which the stock-yards were at one time notorious, must have been more or less known to certain officials. But all this merely corrupted a limited number of inspectors, and although their corruption was complete and involved entire administrations, it did not actually touch large numbers of persons. During the strike of 1904, however, 1,200 policemen, actual men possessed of human sensibilities, were called upon to patrol the yards inside and out. There is no doubt that the police inspector of the district thoroughly represented the alliance of the City Hall with the business interests, that he did not mean to discover anything which was derogatory to the packers nor to embarrass them in any way during the conduct of the strike. Had these 1,200 men, more than a regiment in numbers, been a regiment in training and tradition, they, too, would have seen nothing, and would have been content at heart, as they were obliged to be in conduct, to have arrested the strikers on the slightest provocation, and to have protected the strike-breakers.

But they were, in point of fact, called upon to face a very peculiar situation, because of the type of men and women who formed the bulk of the strike-breakers, and because, during the first weeks of the strike, these men and women were kept constantly inside the yards, day and night. In order to hold them at all, discipline outside of working hours was thoroughly relaxed, and the policemen in charge of the yards, while there ostensibly to enforce law and order, were obliged every night to connive at prize-fighting, at open gambling, and at prostitution. They were there, not to enforce law and order as it defines itself in the minds of the bulk of healthy-minded citizens, but only to keep the strikers from molesting the non-union workers. This was certainly commendable, but, after all, only part of their real duty.

Because they were normal men living in the midst of normal life and not in barracks, they were shocked by the law-breaking which they were ordered to protect, and much drawn in sympathy to the strikers whom they were supposed to regard as public enemies. An investigator who interviewed one hundred policemen found only one who did not frankly extol the virtues of the strikers as over against the shocking vices of the imported men. This, of course, was an extreme case brought about by the unusual and peculiar type of the imported strike-breakers. There is, however, trustworthy evidence incorporated in affidavits which were at the time submitted to the Mayor of Chicago, concerning the unlawful conduct of the men who were under the protection of the city police.

It was hard for a patriot not to feel jealous of the union and of the enthusiasm of those newly emigrated citizens. They poured out their gratitude and affection upon this first big friendly force which had offered them help in their desperate struggle in the New World. This devotion, this comradeship, and this fine esprit de corps should have been won by the Government itself from these newly arrived, scared, and untrained citizens. The union was that which had concerned itself with the real struggle for life, shelter, a chance to work, and bread for their children. It had come to them in a language they could understand, through men with interests akin to their own, and it gave them both their first chance to express themselves through a democratic vote, and an opportunity to register by a ballot their real opinion upon a very important matter.

They used the referendum votes, the latest and perhaps the most clever device of democratic government, and yet they used it to decide a question which the government supposed to be quite outside its realm. When they left the old country, the government of America held their deepest hopes, and represented that which they believed would obtain for them the fullness of life denied them in the lands of oppressive governments. It is a curious commentary on the fact that we have not yet attained self-government when the real and legitimate objects of men’s desires must still be incorporated in those voluntary groups for which the government, when it does its best, can only afford protection from interference. As the religious revivalist looks with longing upon the fervor of a single-tax meeting, as the orthodox Jew sees his son stay away from Yom Kippur service in order to pour all his religious fervor, his precious zeal for righteousness which has been gathered through the centuries, into the Socialist Labor Party—so a patriot finds himself exclaiming to the immigrant, like another Andrea del Sarto to his wife, “Oh, but what do they—what do they to please you more?”

The stock-yards strike afforded an example of the national appeal subordinated to an appeal made in the name of labor. During the early stages of the strike it was discovered that newly arrived Macedonians were taking many of the places vacated by the strikers. One of the most touching scenes during the strike was the groups of Macedonians who would sit together in the twilight playing on primitive pipes singularly like the one which is associated with the great god Pan. The slender song would carry amazingly in the smoke-bedimmed air, affecting the spectator with a curious sense of incongruity.

When the organized labor of Chicago discovered that the strikers’ places were taken by Greeks, the unions threatened, unless the Greeks were “called off,” to boycott the Greek fruit-dealers all over the city, who with their street stands are singularly dependent upon the patronage of workingmen. The fact that the strike-breakers were Macedonians, as it happened, was an additional advantage at the moment; for the Greeks have been much concerned to make it clear that Macedonia belongs to Greece, and have hotly resented the efforts of Bulgaria to establish a protectorate over the country. They therefore responded at once to this acknowledgment of their claim, and, partly to show that the Macedonians and Greeks were countrymen, partly because they resented the implication that a Greek could act a cowardly part in any situation, and also, doubtless, because they were merchants threatened with loss of trade, they made superhuman efforts to clear the yards of Macedonians. This they accomplished in a remarkably short time. So reckless were they in the methods they used that it was common gossip throughout the Greek colony that strike-breakers would be refused the comforts of religion by the Greek priests in the city, although doubtless this rumor was unfounded. This utter recklessness of method, this determination to deter strike-breaking at any cost, is, of course, a revelation of the war element which is an essential part of any strike. The appeal to “loyalty” is the nearest approach to a moral appeal which can be safely made in the midst of a war of any sort. During a long strike one result of the non-moral appeal is to confuse the situation so that it becomes utterly impossible to tell how many men refuse to become strike-breakers because they are terrorized and how many stay away from conviction. The non-moral appeal not only sins against the principles advocated by trades unionists, but it contradicts itself and brings great confusion into the situation, as war ideals always do when thrust into a peaceful society. It was, for instance, quite impossible to tell whether the lowering in the type of man who was willing to take a striker’s place, so that at last only very ignorant men from the southern plantations could be induced to work, was due to a species of class consciousness, a response to the demand felt so strongly by labor men—“Thou shalt not take thy neighbor’s job”—or whether workingmen are becoming so afraid to take striker’s places that these places must at last be given to men who have come from such remote parts of the country that “they do not know enough to be afraid.” The unions themselves could take no accounting of their real strength because of the terrorism which had become thrust into the situation. And yet all that the stock-yards workers were demanding through this long and disastrous strike, was the minimum wage which has been guaranteed by conservative governments elsewhere, and is recognized even in the United States in much governmental work under the contracts of civil or Federal authorities. So timid are American cities, however, in dealing with this perfectly reasonable subject of wages in its relation to municipal employees, that when they do prescribe a minimum wage for city contract work, they allow it to fall into the hands of the petty politician and to become part of a political game, making no effort to give it a dignified treatment in relation to the cost of living and to the margin of leisure. In this the English cities have anticipated us, both as to time and legitimate procedure. Have Americans formed a sort of “imperialism of virtue,” holding on to preconceived ideals of government and insisting that they must fit all the people who come to our shores, even though they crush the most promising bits of self-expression in the process? Is the American attitude toward self-government like that of the Anglo-Saxon towards civilization, save that he goes forth to rule all the nations of the earth by one pattern, while we remain at home and bid them to rule themselves by one pattern? We firmly decline not only to consider matters of industry and commerce as germane to government, but we also decline to bring men together upon that most natural and inevitable of all foundations, their industrial needs.

The government which refuses to consider matters of this sort, or at least waits until their neglect becomes a scandal before it consents to deal with them, as a result of this caution forces the most patriotic citizens to ignore the Government and to embody their scruples and hopes of progress in voluntary organizations. To be afraid to extend the functions of government may be to lose what we have. A government has always received feeble support from its constituents as soon as its demands appeared childish or remote. Citizens inevitably neglect or abandon civic duty, when their government no longer embodies their genuine desires. It is useless to hypnotize ourselves by unreal talk of colonial ideas, and of our patriotic duty towards immigrants as though the situation was one demanding the passage of a set of resolutions when we fail to realize that the nation can be saved only by patriots who are possessed of a contemporaneous knowledge.